Andrea Leadsom: My hon. Friend is pushing against an open door. He may be aware that in 2023 we made some legislative changes to give the General Dental Council more flexibility to expand the registration options open to international dentists, tripling the capacity of three sittings of the overseas registration exam from August 2023 and increasing the number of sittings for the part 2 exam in 2024 from three to four. That will create an additional 1,300 places overall for overseas dentists aiming to work in the UK. We will also be bringing forward measures to enable dental therapists to work at the top of their training, which will expand the capacity. He is right that reform of the UDA is also required and we will be bringing forward our plans shortly.

David Davies: I understand the hon. Gentleman’s position and he is right to stand up for his workers. This is the reality of the situation: that plan has not persuaded Tata. Tata has not said that it is credible. Tata has said to me that it could not go along with that plan, because although one of the blast furnaces—blast furnace No. 4—has a number of years to run, it would still come to the end of the life of the coke plant and the sintering plant, so if Tata went ahead with that proposal, it would keep open one blast furnace, which is still losing a lot of money, and then have to start importing all the coke and all the sinter that it would need for it.
There is then the technical problem in that Tata says it would be very difficult indeed to build an arc furnace next to a working blast furnace containing molten steel. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman can shake his head, but that is what it is saying to us. That is what it has said to us as a Government and that is why we find ourselves in the difficult, unpleasant and awful situation of having to choose between 3,000 people losing their jobs and 17,500 people losing their jobs. [Official Report, Correction, 1 February 2024, Vol. 744, c. 14MC.] That is why we came to the decision we did.